Another end-of-year wrap-up that nobody asked for.
I’m not going to bore you with some tale of woe about all the personal life challenges 2025 brought to me and my loved ones. We all face those, year in and year out, and some years are tougher than others, and in the end, it’s all relative. Suffice it to say that I’m a fortunate person and I try to be grateful for all of life’s blessings.
So instead, I will bore you with a listicle about my year in writing.
Continue reading “The year in numbers”On interior monologues, the devil we don’t know, the future of fiction, and the rage of the literary man
Happy Juneteenth!
Here are some lit-related items that caught my eye in recent weeks:
As always, if you’d rather listen to a podcast-style AI summary, here you go. Or use the player below.
Image via Pexels.
A Father’s Day weekend conversation about this new genre and the appeal of “voicey, moral, unwieldy, independent, ambitious, and impatient” literary men.
With Father’s Day just around the corner, it seems appropriate and timely to shine the Friday Five spotlight on Daniel Roberts, a historian, writer, and host of the Dad Lit podcast, which is available on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
A professional historian, Dan has many published works of history, but no published works of fiction — not yet, at least. He is the author of the biography, The American: The Life, Times, and War of Basil Antonelli, the story of an Italian-American immigrant that Amazon describes as “a quintessentially American biography of immigration, assimilation, and sacrifice.” Currently he is on submission with two novels, The Black Hole Pact, a Sci Fi novel about a woman investigating her father’s role in saving the world from a killer asteroid, and Cursed at the Hanging Pine Inn, a horror novel best described as The Shining meets Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
He established the Dad Lit Pod earlier this year, not long after a bit of hand-wringing in The New York Times about the disappearance of the literary man (a topic I also blogged about). So the topics Dan delves into on his podcast have never been more timely.
As you might expect from such a booster of Dad Lit, Dan is himself a dad. He’s the father to a four-year-old girl and has been blissfully married for eight years.
Continue reading “Friday Five: historian, writer, and Dad Lit podcaster Dan Roberts”‘Transforming raw drafts into polished gems happens during editing, so ease up on chasing a “perfect” story until the final passes.’
He may be a relative newcomer to the world of writing podcasts, but Michael Vadney is bringing a refreshing, enthusiastic voice and dynamite content with his Author Adjacent pod on YouTube.
The title reflects Michael’s own “situation as a writer-in-progress. In his words, the podcast is about his “journey from hobbyist writer to professional author with a focus on novel writing. ” (Check out his brief video summary about the podcast.) The show features interviews with authors and explores topics related to writing, publishing, and the creative process. I also enjoy Michael’s frequent shorts. They often provide morsels of inspiration and encouragement like this one, which I included in a recent blog post about my own writing struggles.
Read on to learn about the man behind the podcast, why he launched Author Adjacent, what inspires him, and more.
Continue reading “Friday Five: Author Adjacent podcaster Michael Vadney”Thanks to the wonders of AI and an idea from Ashley Budd, I am entering the world of podcasting with a new feature I’m calling LitLinks.
LitLinks is an occasional compilation of literary- and writing-related content posted right here on the blog and also fed into Google’s NotebookLM AI research assistant to create an audio summary of all those links. That way, if you don’t have the time to read all those great links, you can listen to the podcast-style presentation while driving, jogging, doing the dishes, or avoiding your daily chores.
Continue reading “Introducing LitLinks (blog feature and AI-generated podcast)”
